NCAA Championships On Deck for Five Wolverine Men
6/5/2017 12:00:00 AM | Men's Track & Field
June 5, 2017
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THIS WEEK
Wed-Fri., June 7-9 -- at NCAA Outdoor Championships (Eugene, Ore.), 12:30 p.m./10:30 a.m./6:57 p.m. PDT
Meet Information | Live Results
• Kornacki: 10 Events, Two Days, One More Chance for Bastien
BROADCAST INFORMATION
• Wednesday: Field Events on ESPN3 (12:30 p.m. PDT) | Track Events on ESPN2 (6:30 p.m. PDT)
• Thursday: Field Events on ESPN3 (10:30 a.m. PDT)
• Friday: Track Events on ESPN (6:57 p.m. PDT)
Five men from the University of Michigan men's track and field team are set to take on the nation's top talent at the NCAA Outdoor Championships Wednesday through Friday (June 7-9) on the sport's biggest American stage at Historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
Steven Bastien, Joe Ellis and Taylor McLaughlin are making return trips to the national meet for the second consecutive year, joined by first-time NCAA Outdoor qualifiers Grant Cartwright and Andrew Liskowitz.
Bastien and McLaughlin were first-team All-Americans a season ago in their signature decathlon and 400-meter hurdles events, while Ellis earned honorable mention in the hammer throw in his redshirt freshman season.
Both Cartwright and Liskowitz will be competing in the shot put. Cartwright is no stranger to NCAA success, having earned national runner-up honors in the weight throw this past winter.
Fans can watch every minute of Michigan action as part of ESPN's wall-to-wall coverage of the NCAA Outdoor Championships on its broadcast and digital platforms. Field events for all three days can be streamed live online via ESPN3, with track action broadcast live on ESPN2 on Wednesday and Thursday, and ESPN on Friday.
Live results are also available for all three days at the link above, and up-to-the-minute updates will be provided on the @UMichTrack twitter account.
THE MEET
With the backdrop of Historic Hayward Field, the men and women will compete on alternating days at the pinnacle of the collegiate track and field season. The men will be in action on Wednesday and Friday, while the women compete Thursday and Saturday.
Notably for Michigan, the lone events that break that pattern are the two-day men's decathlon -- featuring Bastien -- and women's heptathlon. The decathlon will be contested Wednesday and Thursday, followed by the heptathlon the final two days of the meet.
Not only will the quintet of Wolverines be competing for individual glory, they will be looking to amass points for Michigan in the team standings. Eight athletes in each event score points for their respective teams, with national champions earning 10 points (10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1) points for each of the eight spots.
The team with the most points at the end of Friday is declared the winner.
Individually, student-athletes will also be going for All-America honors from the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA). The top eight finishers in each event will earn first-team All-America honors, with finishers nine through 16 earning second-team All-America awards. The remainder of the athletes in the meet will earn honorable mention, though these honorees are not to be considered All-Americans.
THE SCHEDULE
| Time (ET) | Name | Event | Rank | Watch |
| Wednesday, June 7 | ||||
| 3:30 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec 100m | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 4:10 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec Long Jump | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 5 p.m. | Joe Ellis | Hammer Throw | #6 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 5:25 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec Shot Put | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 6:40 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec High Jump | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 9:30 p.m. | Taylor McLaughlin | 400 Hurdles* | #16 | ESPN2 |
| 9:40 p.m. | Grant Cartwright | Shot Put | #20 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 9:40 p.m. | Andrew Liskowitz | Shot Put | #15 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 9:56 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec 400m | #12 | ESPN2 |
| Thursday, June 8 | ||||
| 1:30 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec 110H | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 2:20 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec DT | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 3:30 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec PV | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 6 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec JT | #12 | ESPN3 ^ |
| 9:56 p.m. | Steven Bastien | Dec 1500 | #12 | ESPN2 |
| Friday, June 9 | ||||
| 9:57 p.m. | Taylor McLaughlin | 400 Hurdles* | #16 | ESPN |
LEGEND
* = Semifinal, with a final to follow
Dec = Decathlon event
Scheduled time for final, pending semifinal qualifying results
^ = Available online only. ESPN/ESPN2 broadcasts are available on TV and via webstream
THE LINEUP
• Big Ten decathlon champion Steven Bastien will be looking for his second consecutive first-team All-America honor in his signature outdoor event. He was eighth at nationals a year ago. Though Bastien has completed just one decathlon in 2017, it was the one that counted -- the Big Ten Championships -- and he turned a more-than 100-point deficit heading into the final event into a nearly 100-point victory. He is attempting to become the first two-time All-America decathlete in school history.
• Big Ten hammer throw champion Joe Ellis returns to the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the second year in a row after a 17th-place finish as a redshirt freshman in 2016. Though his path to Eugene was not the clearest -- he was 10th at the NCAA East Preliminaries, and only 12 advanced -- his 2017 campaign has been historic, having twice shattered his own school record in the event from a year ago. Should he earn All-America honors, it would become even more historic. Not since Roderick Cox won the NCAA hammer throw title in 1933 has a Wolverine claimed All-America honors in the event.
• Indoor national weight throw runner-up Grant Cartwright will be making his NCAA Outdoor Championships debut in the shot put. Incidentally, the shot put is the only throwing event in which Cartwright has not set a new career best this year, having done so in both the hammer throw and discus at the Big Ten Championships last month. With two strong postseason performances in the shot put and more than a week of focusing solely on that event, a personal record in the third could be coming this Wednesday in Oregon.
• Joining Cartwright in the shot put will be redshirt freshman Andrew Liskowitz, the lone freshman shot putter competing at these NCAA Outdoor Championships. Liskowitz has likewise been strong this postseason, finishing third at the Big Ten Championships and clinching his trip to Eugene with a big throw on his final attempt at the East Prelims. For both Cartwright and Liskowitz, they will be going for the first second-team All-America honor in the event since Cody Rifle in 2013 and the first first-team/top-eight honor since Dave Owen won the national title in 1957.
• Taylor McLaughlin returns to the NCAA Championships for the second time in his two-year collegiate career in pursuit of a second straight first-team All-America award. McLaughlin finished fifth in this event a year ago as a true freshman, though he enters this year's edition slightly lower in the seedings. Nevertheless, McLaughlin has shown big-meet moxy with last year's NCAA finish, a USATF Junior title and an IAAF World Junior silver medal in the event. He is peaking at the right time, as well, having run his fastest two times of the season -- 50.77 in the first round and 50.39 in the quarterfinals -- at the NCAA East Prelims.
Tweet of the Week 
T-minus two days 'til these 5 guys take on the nation's best at the @NCAATrackField Championships!
June 7-9 on ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN3 pic.twitter.com/gZq3PR1RXp-- Michigan Track&Field (@UMichTrack) June 5, 2017
Communications Contact: Kyle Terwillegar
Players Mentioned
